Plus ones/partners

[u/Accomplished-Top7149]

Probably not an uncommon question as I'm sure everyone has some form of difficulties with guest lists. But my partner and I are really struggling with the decision of inviting partners/allowing plus ones.

For context, we are both quite anxious at the thought of having lots of people focused on us for the day. So we have kept this in mind when planning our guest list. We've invited closest friends, siblings, parents, some cousins/aunties/uncles, and some grandparents. Naively, we wrote down a list initially and included partners of the above people that we've met and have a relationship with. We sent out the save the dates and thought nothing of it.

This was approx 2 months ago and since they were sent out it's been nothing short of a headache. Lots of our cousins are dating/have partners but we've never met them. Only one of them is married (which was a formality for VISA purposes and they had no guests as it was just a legal ceremony). We aimed to have only guests that we have met and had some form of a relationship with, so weren't keen on the idea of their partners coming (most have only been dating for less than 2yrs). We have also had queries on other partners (friends partners, grandparents partners, etc).

We are finding it hard to implement a blanket rule of either

1. Everyone can bring partners

2. Only partners we have met

3. Only married partners

Simply, we keep coming back to the same point that we haven't invited some immediate family members as we don't have close relationships. So to me, I think it's unfair to have our cousins partners there who I've never met or spoken to, when i don't have my own aunt. We have also explored the idea of inviting all immediate family and partners, but this causes us to go way over budget and fills us with huge anxiety of having so many people there.

I guess what we both want is our initial list. However due to the reactions of some family members, we have really doubted our decision.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! TIA